Privacy Policy

Honest Local Web is a sole proprietorship registered in Ontario, Canada (Business Identification Number 1001786919). It is based in Chatham-Kent. In these pages, "we" and "us" mean Honest Local Web. "You" means the person or business that uses it.

This page covers our own customers and the people who visit honestlocalweb.ca.

Each customer's website is run by that customer. They are in charge of the information their own visitors send them.

Email privacy@honestlocalweb.ca with any privacy question or request.

• Your account: name, email, password (stored only in a scrambled form we cannot read), sign-in code settings, business details, and everything you put on your site.
• Billing: Stripe handles payments. Stripe collects your card details. We only get your billing name and address, the card type and last 4 digits, and whether a payment worked. We never see your full card number.
• Security logs: IP address, browser, pages asked for, sign-ins, and a log of account actions (like sign-up, publish, edits, downloads) with the date and time.
• Messages: what people send through contact forms on our site or yours. Messages to your site go to your email.
• Reports and complaints: what someone tells us when they report a site, and their email address.

We use one needed cookie to keep you signed in, and one to remember a device you trust for sign-in codes. We do not use advertising cookies on honestlocalweb.ca.

• to run your account and your site
• to bill you
• to check who owns an account and to stop fraud and abuse
• to send service emails, like sign-in codes, receipts, trial and renewal reminders, check-ins and changes to our terms
• to answer complaints, copyright notices and legal requests
• to keep the service safe
• to follow the law, including tax law

We do not sell personal information. We do not send marketing emails without your OK.

• Stripe, for payments.
• IONOS, for web hosting, the database and email.
• Cloudflare, only if you connect your own web address on the paid plan.
• Police, courts, or a person making a copyright or legal complaint, but only when the law requires or allows it.
• A business that takes over Honest Local Web, if that ever happens.

These companies handle information for us under their own privacy and security rules.

Our hosting company, IONOS, keeps data in data centres outside Canada (in the United States and Europe). Stripe and Cloudflare also handle data outside Canada. This means your information may be stored outside Canada, and courts and governments there may be able to get it under their laws.

• Account and site: while your account is open. If you close your account, we delete your site and photos within 90 days.
• Backups: replaced over time on a schedule.
• Account action log: 2 years.
• Billing records: as long as tax law requires (in Canada, usually 6 years).
• Copyright notice records: 6 months, or longer if a court case starts.
• Anything about a complaint or legal request: until it is settled.

You can see and fix most of your details in your account, and download your website at any time.

You can also ask us for a copy of the personal information we have about you, ask us to fix it, or take back your consent. Taking back consent may mean closing your account.

Email privacy@honestlocalweb.ca. We will answer within 30 days. If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

We use secure connections (HTTPS), scrambled passwords, sign-in codes, limited access and backups. No system is perfect.

If a breach could cause someone serious harm, we will tell the people affected and the Privacy Commissioner as soon as we can, as the law requires. We keep a record of every breach for 2 years.

When you pick a password, we may check it against a public list of leaked passwords (Have I Been Pwned). Only the first few characters of a scrambled version are sent. Your password never leaves our server.

We will post changes on this page. We will email account holders about important changes.